1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to detecting and logging triggered events in a data stream.
2. Description of the Related Art
Program materials for digital television, such as that provided by DIRECTV®, the assignee of the present invention, are typically transmitted as digital data streams encoded using the MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group) standard promulgated by the ISO (International Standards Organization). MPEG provides an efficient way to represent video and audio in the form of a compressed bit stream.
The MPEG-1 standard is described in a document entitled “Coding of Moving Pictures and Associated Audio for Digital Storage Media at up to about 1.5 MBit/s,” ISO/IEC 11172 (1993), which is incorporated by reference herein. The MPEG-2 standard is described in a document entitled “Generic Coding of Moving Pictures and Associated Audio Information,” ISO/IEC 13818 (1998), which is incorporated by reference herein.
As a satellite broadcaster, DIRECTV® requires that each of the channels of program materials be encoded into MPEG and statistically-multiplexed at a collection facility, before being transported via common carrier to a broadcast center for uplinking to satellites operated by DIRECTV®. Content providers, such as Disney®, Viacom®, HBO®, Showtime®, Starz®, ESPN®, etc., often provide DIRECTV® with a pre-encoded and statistically-multiplexed MPEG data stream.
At the present time, various viewing services manually review the program materials to determine if advertisements or other various events occur or are being broadcast. However, manually viewing the program materials is costly, error prone and inefficient. Consequently, there is need for a system by which such events can be detected in an automated fashion. The present invention satisfies that need.